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At the moment she's a "pint-sized" 5ft tall, but soon things will be looking up for Margaret the giraffe.

The female Rothschild giraffe was born prematurely at Chester Zoo after mother, Fay, went into labour two weeks early.

But mother and daughter are doing just fine and, thanks to hand-rearing by her keepers, 10-day-old Margaret is now tipping the scales at just over five stone (34-kilos).Tim Rowlands, team leader of the Giraffes section, said: "Margaret is one of the smallest giraffe calves we have ever seen."Fay isn't the largest of giraffes and Margaret was also early which might go some way to explaining her size.

"Margaret was having difficulty suckling so our keeping team are now hand-rearing her and she is going from strength so strength.

"We have a good track record when it comes to breeding giraffes and we are delighted to welcome another to the fold."

The birth of Margaret - who is named after Tim's mum - has been welcomed as there are only 600 Rothschild giraffes left in the wild, where they roam the lowlands of Kenya and Uganda.

Margaret's story will feature in the new series of Zoo Days, a Channel Five series which takes viewers behind the scenes at Chester Zoo.

A man dressed in a condom costume gives out condoms to beach goers during a summer campaign by the Chilean Corporation of the Prevention of AIDS at Vina Del Mar beach, 75 miles (120 km) northwest of Santiago, Chile, January 27, 2008.

A man who calls himself a tantric master has broken his own world record by standing in ice for 72 minutes.

The 48-year-old Wim Hof outside Rubin Museum of Art in a clear container filled with ice for an hour and 12 minutes on Saturday.

Hof says he survives by controlling his body temperature with the tantric practice of tumo.

A worker adjusts glasses in an attempt to break the world record for the "Largest Champagne Fountain" in the shopping center Wijnegem near Antwerp, Jan. 25, 2008. The 7 metre (22.9 feet) high pyramid will contain more than 43,000 glasses and weigh 8,750 kg (19,290 pounds) to set a new record.

Fujitsu have launched a mobile phone, the F705i, which is reported to be the World’s slimmest waterproof mobile phone.

It is just 13.77mm thick, and is able to be plunged underwater for a maximum of 30 minutes without any damage to the phone.

It also has a 1.3 mega pixel camera which can be used as a videophone, and the battery will provide 170 minutes of talk-time of 100 on the videophone.

Marc Quinn last amazed the public by placing a giant pregnant disabled woman on the Fourth Plinth of Trafalgar Square.

Now he is looking at pregnancy from the inside with nine large sculptures depicting the development of a foetus from 22 days to just before birth.

They have been carved in a pink marble whose mottling conveys the fine veins below the growing child's skin.

Great expectations: the huge foetus sculptures in the White Cube gallery by Marc Quinn are carved out of marble with pink veining that makes them look more realistic. The sculptures will be sold under the title Evolution

They go on display at the White Cube Mason's Yard gallery, St James's, tomorrow in Quinn's first exhibition in the capital since 2005.

Quinn was inspired partly by Slaves, sculptures by the Renaissance master Michelangelo, in which bodies almost fight their way out of rough-hewn rock.

But the five-ton sculptures, made of marble quarried from the Spanish-Portuguese border, were also prompted by witnessing the way viewers reacted with repulsion to Alison Lapper, the Trafalgar Square model, and to his series of figurative sculptures depicting people missing arms and legs.

Yet everyone had once been a foetus just like these curious-looking embryos, he said, as he put the finishing touches to the show.

"This one looks like an alien in films. Some are distinctively extraterrestrial.

"But it's universal because every single person has come from this."

He said the pieces flagged up "our relationship to our body and what is normal, beautiful or different".

After producing Alison Lapper Pregnant, Quinn created giant works of Kate Moss in a yoga pose.

One will be produced in gold at the British Museum later in the year.

"I thought the next thing to do would be to make a sculpture of the person who's the ideal beauty of the moment. But even Kate Moss doesn't live up to the image."

The embryo works continue Quinn's fascination with issues of genetics and DNA manipulation and have been developed from images in medical textbooks and scans of the 43-year-old artist's own two children, aged six and two.

The embryo sequence is being sold as a whole under the title Evolution. The show runs until 23 February.

The pilgrimage is associated with the life of Muhammad, but the ritual of the Hajj itself was considered ancient even during his lifetime in the 7th century. Many Muslims believe that it goes back to the time of Abraham in 2000 BC. Pilgrims would join processions of tens of thousands of people, who would simultaneously converge on Mecca for the week of the Hajj, and perform a series of rituals. Each person would walk counter-clockwise seven times about the Kaaba, the cubical building towards which all Muslims pray, kiss the sacred Black Stone on its corner, run back and forth between the hills of Al-Safa and Al-Marwah, drink from the Zamzam Well, go to the plains of Mount Arafat to stand in vigil, then proceed to Muzdalifah to gather pebbles, which they would throw at a rock in Mina to perform the ritual of the Stoning of the Devil. The pilgrims would then shave their heads, perform an animal sacrifice, and celebrate the three day global festival of Eid ul-Adha. via:wikipedia

photos of a dog that was allegedly born with a “human-like” face in Umbaúba, Sergipe, Brazil. Much better-looking than the pig that had a “human-like” face, born on Rio Grande do Sul a few weeks ago. Both are congenital anomalies, and the poor animals were stillborn.